Outdoor Learning and Experiences as a Way Forward During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Abstract: 

This article examines how the inclusion of outdoor learning can provide early childhood education and care (ECEC) a way forward during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The pandemic has significantly impacted ECEC programs and, although it is not a new concept, outdoor learning provides opportunities to mitigate negative impacts of pandemic-related restrictions for children and educators. Practice-based examples from an early learning setting are provided to highlight some of these opportunities. Some of the challenges and limitations of outdoor learning and experiences are also discussed, and a resource list to support programs to begin embracing outdoor learning is provided.

Keywords:

COVID-19, early childhood education and care, early years pedagogy, outdoor environments, outdoor learning

Leading Post-pandemic Organizational Change in Early Childhood Education: How Self-Awareness as a Leader and Distributed Leadership are Foundational to the Change Process

Abstract:

The changes required to work through the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted the ECE community to consider new ways of thinking about how formal and informal leaders and early childhood educators work together through small and large organizational change. Complex changes have occurred throughout the pandemic, requiring leaders to think more deeply about how they plan for and execute organizational change. The aim of this article is to initiate dialogue around factors that must be considered post-pandemic in order to lead sustainable change in early years settings. Specifically, emergent ways of thinking about how change is led in early years education through both self-reflection on the part of leaders and a culture of distributed leadership are explored.

Keywords:

change, COVID-19, distributed leadership, early childhood education, leadership

An Outcome Evaluation of a Professional Development Opportunity Focusing on Sexuality Education for Early Learning Professionals

Abstract: 

This outcome evaluation assesses the impact of a one-day professional development opportunity in sexuality education for early learning professionals. A non-experimental pre-test/post-test research design evaluated the experiences of 28 participants. Thematic analysis and paired samples t-tests analyzed the perceived impacts and differences between pre- and post-test assessments. Positive changes were demonstrated in participants’ (a) perceptions of their daily practice, specifically increases in knowledge, comfort, and confidence in answering children’s questions about sexuality, and increased communication between staff and parents; and (b) preparedness to address sexuality in early learning settings. Recommendations for practice aim to increase professional capacity and provide the necessary support for early learning professionals.

Keywords:

child development, early childhood education, early learning, professional development, program evaluation, public health, sexuality education 

ECE’s Early Experiences in Full-Day Kindergarten: “They just weren’t ready for us!”

Abstract: 

Full-day kindergarten in Ontario is built on a legislated partnership between Registered Early Childhood Educators (RECEs) and kindergarten teachers governed by the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT). These partners share professional space in local schools and have a duty to cooperate. A narrative case study used open-ended, semi-structured questions to learn how RECE participants’ experience daily events within this partnership. Three RECE participants, who identified as female, were employed by three different district school boards. Employing positioning theory (Harre & van Langenhove, 1999) and a thematic and plot analysis of RECE storied daily practices (Creswell, 2009), this paper provides a deeper understanding of how RECEs position themselves within the partnership. Four broad themes emerged: communication barriers between partners, marginalized status within the school hierarchy, differential valuing of roles and responsibilities of the partners, and limited RECE professional learning opportunities.

An examination of full-day kindergarten 10 years later suggests RECEs continue to experience systemic and structural inequities due to policies, roles and responsibilities, hierarchies, and professional inequities in the full-day kindergarten partnership.

Keywords:

hierarchy, inter-professional, kindergarten, legislation, marginalization, policy, Registered Early Childhood Educator, teacher, roles, responsibilities

How Early Years Professionals Can Inform an Early Years Policy Framework Prototype

Abstract: 

This study outlines the first phase of a co-design approach to construct an Early Years policy framework prototype by focusing on the perspective of Early Years professionals in the London–Middlesex area. Previous information was collected from parents/caregivers and child care providers; this study adds the voice of the Early Years professional. Empowering key stakeholders, including Early Years professionals, in the co-design of a policy provides the opportunity for those most impacted by the policy to provide insights beyond consultations. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated an urgent need for an Early Years policy framework that includes the perspectives of various stakeholders directly impacted by child care.  

Keywords:

Early Years policy framework, Early Years policy design, human-centred policy design, policy co-design

The Making of Paths: How Movement Forms Plant–Child Relations Indoors

Abstract: 

Thinking with post-qualitative theories, this research explores the relations between plants and children through observations of movement. Human supremacy is decentred in both the material makeup of the classroom as well as in definitions used to categorize the learning that takes place in early childhood education environments. Data is distributed through lively re-storying as plants and 11 young children share an indoor play area. These stories demonstrate how the democracy of relations in a Toronto preschool classroom can use movement to observe the flow of power dynamics within common worlds. The study argues that observations of movement can contribute to the development of pedagogy that promotes collaborative and interrelated relations within human and more-than-human societies.

Keywords:

childhood, common world, movement pedagogy, plants, post-qualitative, power

I Speak Frog: Storying Seasonal Narratives of Children’s Common Worlds

Abstract:

This article stories and (re)stories experiences of young children from three urban preschool classrooms
participating in The Willows, a land-based program. The intentions of reciprocal relationship building
with the land and the other-than-human (also known as “All Our Relations” in many Indigenous
cultures) become the focus of engagement in and with nature. The central figures of children’s seasonal
narratives—Lucy the blue mint leaf beetle, John the snail, the Frog, the Stick, the Medicine/Teaching
Garden, and the Crack Willow tree—illustrate the inter-related common worlds children live in and
attend to in nature. Pedagogical documentation is used to capture the struggles to understand and
adopt the “common worlds” lens and to delve deeply into pedagogies of places where children and the
other-than-human live, learn, and grow.

Keywords:

land-based program, common worlds, pedagogical documentation, Indigenous stories

Plastic City: A Small-Scale Experiment for Disrupting Normative Borders

Abstract:

Since plastics became available in the 1950s, consumers have dealt with the issue of plastic discards by
simply sending them “away”—considering them “out of sight and out of mind” and looking away from any
responsibility for this material and its ongoing effects. In this article, an interactive exhibit was generated to provoke relational encounters between children and plastic discards. Situated on a university campus that wins annual awards for sustainability, Plastic City was erected anew each week; a compelling small-scale experiment regarding what is made visible and what is outcast in the utopian settler-colonial imaginary of the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Keywords:

Environmental education, remida, plastics, more-than-human kin, border crossing

Thinking with Plastics: Common Worlds Waste Pedagogies Disrupt the Early Childhood Classroom

Abstract:

that troubled the very notion of early childhood education. Over the past two years, our team of researchers, pedagogists, and early childhood educators has been engaging in a participatory ethnographic research project that explores innovative common worlds pedagogies and alternative plastic waste practices in an early childhood classroom. Our research is informed by the common worlds framework, which challenges child-centred approaches to learning by decentering the human and attending instead to complex, entangled human–nonhuman relations that emerge in everyday encounters with nonhuman others, in this case plastics. Through our ongoing plastics inquiry, we notice how plastics and the concept of excess invite us to respond to plastic waste. While this research is still in progress, we have found that our plastic waste inquiry, alongside other common worlds waste pedagogies, disrupts dominant discourses of early childhood education, the role of the educator, and the very materiality of the classroom.

Keywords:

common worlds, waste pedagogies, plastics, early childhood education, materiality, nonhuman